According to the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate assessment, “Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere’s chemistry.”

The New Scientist reports:

According to one of its lead authors, and the latest draft seen by New Scientist, the report will say: “CO2-induced warming is projected to remain approximately constant for many centuries following a complete cessation of emission. A large fraction of climate change is thus irreversible on a human timescale, except if net anthropogenic CO2 emissions were strongly negative over a sustained period.”

So all this time we have been told we have to change human behavior to fix climate change, but now we are being told they have to geoengineer the planet no matter what. (Might as well go buy that Hummer you’ve had your eye on and eat a few more steaks while you’re at it, because apparently it won’t matter either way.)

The mistake that Melton makes here is that the geoengineering referred to in the article is carbon removal, not Solar Radiation Management (SRM - blocking the sun in some way). When they say "except if net anthropogenic CO2 emissions were strongly negative over a sustained period", they simply mean that we need to remove more CO2 than we add.

Nothing at all is mentioned about spraying things from planes, and it actually does matter if you buy that Hummer, because the entire argument here is about reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which we have to do be reducing carbon emissions, and possibly by actually removing CO2 as well.

And this quote:

According to the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate assessment, “Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere’s chemistry.”

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Is a quote from Fred Pearce of New Scientist, not from the IPCC.

It's so obviously wrong, one can only concluded that Melissa Melton has deliberately created an inflammatory headline to drive traffic to her site - which is filled with the usual array of fear-based ads.

Lastly, even if this was about SRM (which it is not), why would an article about doing SRM in the future indicate in any way that we are doing SRM now?

I begin to see "chemtrail" believers getting upset over these particular lines of text from the Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, taking them out of context:

If SRM [Solar Radiation Management] were terminated for any reason, there is high confidence that global surface temperatures would rise very rapidly to values consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing. CDR [Carbon Dioxide Reduction] and SRM methods carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale.

Without the context some believers suggest this is evidence that SRM is already being used today as "chemtrails", with dire consequences.

Reading the full quote helps us better understand what is actually being referred to:

Methods that aim to deliberately alter the climate system to counter climate change, termed geoengineering, have been proposed. Limited evidence precludes a comprehensive quantitative assessment of both Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and their impact on the climate system. CDR methods have biogeochemical and technological limitations to their potential on a global scale. There is insufficient knowledge to quantify how much CO2 emissions could be partially offset by CDR on a century timescale. Modelling indicates that SRM methods, if realizable, have the potential to substantially offset a global temperature rise, but they would also modify the global water cycle, and would not reduce ocean acidification. If SRM were terminated for any reason, there is high confidence that global surface temperatures would rise very rapidly to values consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing. CDR and SRM methods carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale.

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It is clear that what they are talking about are potential future methods and the potential side effects. Modelling means no practical means have yet been made, only models that exist either as calculations or simulations in a virtual environment. The if realizable means if sufficient research and confirmation can be made to establish the safety of the method by minimizing long time side effects of both Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management.

The irony is that the same believers often think of IPCC as liars (global warming is a scam), not thinking about the contradiction when they accept parts from an IPCC report as truth.

I was just going to post something very similar mrfintoil. When the IPCC start to publish their full findings from next week we are going to see many more misinterpretations, possibly deliberate. I watched the IPCC presentations yesterday and they are very careful with the language they use so in theory it should be hard to misinterprete what they say.

... we are going to see many more misinterpretations, possibly deliberate.

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The many lines of bullshit the public will be forced to read, hear, see will be definitely deliberate. The public aren't been force-fed nonsense by accident, or because those pushing the mis-info are confused. They know exactly what they're doing, and what's at stake.

Need the opinion of a edumacated folk well versed in the Climate Change discussion.

One thing that occured to me that after so much hype about emissions, and in turn, vilifying the US for creating all the "alleged" problems of the world, how much focus is deforestation of the worlds rainforests issue given. I don't hear much about that, well in the press at least. Nor do I have the time to put all the data together, but has anyone seen a chart showing, or disputing a link between deforestation and global temperatures?

Need the opinion of a edumacated folk well versed in the Climate Change discussion.

One thing that occured to me that after so much hype about emissions, and in turn, vilifying the US for creating all the "alleged" problems of the world, how much focus is deforestation of the worlds rainforests issue given. I don't hear much about that, well in the press at least. Nor do I have the time to put all the data together, but has anyone seen a chart showing, or disputing a link between deforestation and global temperatures?

Click to expand...

The global thermal radiation budget is a complex thing. The's an interesting new article out about how the decline of farming in the Soviet Union has lead to carbon being sucked up by abandoned farms.

Newscientist

Fall of USSR locked up world's largest store of carbon
by Michael Slezak

The fall of the Soviet Union created the largest ever human-made carbon sink – abandoned farmland.

In 1991, the USSR formally split into separate republics. The subsequent collapse of industry reduced the amount of greenhouse gas emissions Russia produced – helping it to easily meet the climate targets set by the Kyoto protocol

But as well as cutting emissions, the fall had another effect. The privatisation of land led to one of the biggest land-use changes of the 20th century. Huge tracts of farmland were abandoned when the collectivised farming system introduced by Stalin collapsed, and farmers simply left the land and headed for the cities.

Ever since, plants have been reclaiming the land and locking in carbon as they grow.

Researchers have tried to put a figure on the size of this effect but estimates have varied dramatically, and haven't always taken account of the fact that plants grow at different rates on different types of soil and lock up more carbon as they grow larger.

To get an answer to how much carbon is sequestered in Russian territory, Irina Kurganova from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Pushchino and colleagues mapped the distribution of soil types for the Russian part of the former USSR and overlaid it with a map of land-use change. They then looked at every study of carbon storage they could find and collated them to estimate the amount of carbon captured at each point on their map.

Largest human-made sink

They found that in total, the 455,000 square kilometres of land abandoned in the part of the USSR that is now Russia has locked away an average of 42.6 million tonnes of carbon every year since 1990. This means that each year, the land has been locking away the equivalent of 10 per cent of Russia's carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the researchers calculate.

"Everything like this makes a difference," says Jonathan Sanderman, a soil chemist at CSIRO Land and Water in Australia. "Ten per cent is quite a bit considering most nations are only committed to 5 per cent reduction targets. So by doing absolutely nothing - by having depressed their economy - they've achieved quite a bit."

He says the abandoned farmland is probably the largest human-made carbon sink, but notes it came at the cost of enormous social and economic hardship.

Modelling the effect into the future, Kurganova estimates that, since the land has remained uncultivated, another 261 million tonnes will be sequestered over the next 30 years. At this point, the landscape will reach equilibrium, with the same amount of carbon escaping into the atmosphere as

She adds that the stored carbon should now be taken into account if recultivation of the land is contemplated.

The collapse of collective farming in Russia after 1990 and the subsequent economic crisis led to the abandonment of more than 45 million ha of arable lands (23% of the agricultural area). This was the most widespread and abrupt land use change (LUC) in the 20th century in the northern hemisphere. The withdrawal of land area from cultivation led to several benefits including carbon (C) sequestration. Here, we provide a geographically complete and spatially detailed analysis of C sequestered in these abandoned lands. The average C accumulation rate in the upper 20 cm of mineral soil was 0.96 ± 0.08 Mg C ha−1 yr−1 for the first 20 years after abandonment and 0.19 ± 0.10 Mg C ha−1yr−1 during the next 30 years of post-agrogenic evolution and natural vegetation establishment. The amount of C sequestered over the period 1990-2009 accounts to 42.6 ± 3.8 Tg C per year. This C sequestration rate is equivalent to ~10% of the annual C sink in all Russian forests. Furthermore, it compensates all fire and post-fire CO2 emissions in Russia and covers about 4% of the global CO2 release due to deforestation and other land use changes. Our assessment shows a significant mitigation of increasing atmospheric CO2 by prolonged C accumulation in Russian soils caused by collective farming collapse.

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One must always remember to try to put these things in context. How big is the effect, relative to other things.